Teach Us What The Soul Is
by wallflower1
Summary: Time and time again, Paul tries to do what's right. Post "A Love Supreme", guest staring Agent Loomis.


**Characters: **Paul Ballard, Alpha, Loomis.

******AN:****Written for peas_fics in the Livejournal Dollhouse Ficathon using the prompt ****_Paul; carry on, my wayward son. _****Title taken from a quote from Voltaire. Some dialog taken verbatim from "A Love Supreme".**

**2010**

The chair, for all it's delicate mechanisms, was strong. Paul twisted in his restraints, ignoring the pricks from each electrode Alpha stuck into his skin. Alpha was speaking in more convoluted dialog that reminded him of a James Bond villein. Any moment, Alpha will say he expects him to die.

"For months you shared the same room. You never slept with her. You could have but you didn't. If that's not love..."

Alpha walked around the chair and Paul looked up at him.

"Are you gay?" Paul glares at him. There is so much in that statement, a dare to prove him wrong.

"No," Paul said. Maybe if he hadn't been so chivalrous with Echo, but now was not the time for regrets, not when he could feel the chair hum around him.

"Then it's love," Alpha said like a dirty thing. "DeWitt thought so too."

With the hit of a button, a blue film shrouded his vision and his skin twitched from a dozen different jolts, which didn't begin to compare to the stabbing ache all over his head; his last thought in his own mind before the pain blotted everything out was not love not love not-

"-Sure if I'm doing the right thing." Paul said, tilting his head to regard Loomis. The bar and it's partitions muted and blurry, only the crisp angles of Loomis's silhouette, her gray suit, brown skin and the perfect curve of her sheared head were in focus.

Loomis gestured the bartender over, raising her hand high over the blur of people on her left. "Is that a rhetorical question?"

He picked at the label on his beer, the corner pulling up under his fingernails. "No. You're the only other person in the Bureau who will give me an honest answer. You saw the proof when we ran Mellie's fingerprints. You believe that it's real, don't you?"

This is question Paul never asked Loomis. The bartender came and went before she answered.

"When I said I'm starting to believe you; I didn't discount you before. The medical and technology section of the Times reads like sci-fi, Rossum and Bel Mel Tech are in a race to cure Alzheimers, and Lilly Sun is two years away from using stem cells to regenerate full bodies. It's not much of a stretch that the Dollhouse could be growing people in vats of goo and programming them to be slaves."

He was impressed, in the past she made disbelieving faces same as the other agents whenever he talked of the Dollhouse before.

"You've though about this."

"Ballard, people were telling stories about the Dollhouse back when I was in grad school. Whatever your searching for, whatever Mellie is caught up in, isn't the same thing as in the stories. Human trafficking yes, unethical medial experiments maybe, but programmable people?"

"I know it sounds silly, but I'm on to something. Caroline is out there and when I find her I'll have all the proof I need."

"Ballard..." Loomis said on a sigh. She started again, "Paul. I know your doing your best with this assignment, but we both know this is just busywork Tanaka gave you. You barely have any resources behind you. You don't even have a partner."

"I don't play well with others," he said, peeling away more of the label of his beer.

"I couldn't tell," Loomis said. He ignored the sarcasm. "That's even more of a reason to watch your back. Even Mulder had Scully."

Paul took a swallow from the bottle. "Are you offering to be my Scully?"

"Hell no. Have you ever seen the X Files?"

"Just enough to know where the other guys got 'Spooky Ballard' from."

"I donno, Spooky Ballard has a kind of melody to it, rolls off the tongue," Loomis said, chucking at the glare Paul gave her. "What I'm trying to say is, you shouldn't do this alone. You need someone to watch your back."

"Someone who's not you."

Loomis leaned in, starring him down with the sharp stare she used on her subordinates. "Ballard, I have children, a partner. I can't chase this conspiracy with you. If there is anything else I can do that won't get me fired or land me in a hospital with a chip in my neck, I'll do it."

"There is one thing," Paul said. "I'll never get to Kepler without it." He held her look with every desperate feeling he could, willing her to please do him this favor. She didn't turn away, reaching into her jacket pocket for her badge.

"Guess that makes me your default Scully," Loomis said. "Or maybe your informant? Remember, if you need to get a hold of me, tape an 'X' in your apartment window."

"Scully, for sure," Paul said. "When should the unrequited love start?"

"Sorry, already have the requited love position filled." Loomis said.

"Just as well, office romances never work out." He frowned. "Or out of the office romances."

"You can't beat yourself up about not knowing about Mellie."

"I know."

They sat in silence, Loomis sipping her beer, watching people move around the bar in the long mirror behind the bar. Paul flipped her badge open and closed.

"I don't even know who it is that I loved. Mellie isn't real, and whoever she is, I took advantage of her."

"You couldn't have known your neighbor was a possible victim of a consortium of human traffickers." Loomis said, starring off into the rapidly darkening bar. "You were in-

-Love. That memory and thousands more, all that Paul is, contained in Alpha's mind like a heavy drop poised to fall. Paul fell. Seeped into Alpha's consciousness. Disoriented, he could not describe the tide of flesh and feeling he was adrift in.

Alpha's emotions were fractured when Echo responded to him with her fists, fissures that Alpha could not quite seal. Paul slipped in, speaking to Echo though Alpha's lips, begging her to end it, end them. The mad ones swirled around him like slick and thick, trying to grab hold and_ pull._

Echo failed to act. Her face, still in indecision was the last thing he saw before Alpha wrest control from him and he was yanked somewhere deep with the rest

**Three Years Later **

The blond man had his hands over his head, no weapon in sight, but Loomis always trusted her instincts and she could feel the danger coiled in this guy.

"Who are you?"

"I'm not sure we have the time to answer that. Who I am isn't really important. I have a message from your friend Ballard."

"Yeah? If that were true, he would have given it to me himself." Loomis adjusted her grip on her gun.

The man smiled, ratcheting her anxiety. "He said, that you should have looked for the 'X 'in his window."

She lowered her gun, aiming around his kneecaps instead of his face. The lights flickered.

"You have three minutes."

"The city isn't safe, not for you or your family," he said, calm as if this were idle chat.

"I figured that out on my own. Is that all you got?" Loomis shot three people today, the first time since her time at Quantico she had to unholster her weapon, and was not concerned with doing the same to this man.

He continued in the same pleasant tone. "Your best bet is to avoid all the major hubs, aim for smaller towns, or better yet, off the grid completely . Find somewhere without phones or computers or even a radio."

"So I need to find a little house on the prairie?"

His tisked at her. "This isn't the time for jokes. It's only a defense mechanism, yes I know, thank you, _errr_!" The man smashed his palm into his forehead as if he could silence whoever else he was talking to. Loomis shifted on her heels, standing firmly between this man and her her sons, who were watching the exchange with wide eyes.

"Listen, it's not safe. You have to leave. Now."

"I am."

"The world has changed."

"I noticed. Dystopia now." The light above them went out for good. Her oldest son clicked on a flashlight. "What about Paul?"

The blond waved a hand, his shadow stretching over the ceiling. "Fighting the good fight all over the map." He laughed, though it wasn't funny.

The light around him trembled. It was time to go. "When you see him next, tell him thank you."

The blond tipped an imaginary hat to her, and bowed out of the way. Gun trained on his form, she reached behind her for the flashlight in Luis's hand. The man didn't seem surprised that she kept him in her sights until they reached the stairwell, and when she turned back, he was gone.

-  
Alpha let himself into one of the apartments, the occupant sitting in a leather armchair with a rifle in his lap and the back of his head gone. In the kitchen, the food in the fridge was still cool to the touch, so Alpha made a sandwich and neatly wrapped it in a napkin. The windows in the bedroom were blown out, the whine of sirens off in the distance. On the balcony, Alpha watched as Loomis reversed her truck onto the sidewalk and curved around a burning truck in the middle of the street .

"Happy now?" Alpha said out loud.

No, Paul thought, not when everything was wrong, when the city the world burned from a thousand points.

Alpha sighed. "You are so hard to please. I drive completely out of my way to save someone I don't know, and not even a good job?

Paul didn't need to answer. "You're the worst thing that ever happened to me," Alpha said. "Want me to save some puppies while we are here, Jiminy Cricket? A girl scout troop?"

Paul was silent, waiting. Alpha couldn't shove all the compounded horror and disgust Paul and the other personalities felt away; Alpha took a few bites of his sandwich and discarded the rest, appetite lost. It was a meager victory, another in their endless campaign over Paul's soul.

The struggle was exhausting , but Paul would carry on, drawing his humanity in, reflecting it back on the evils of men and the insanity of the world he found himself in.

Might even make Alpha a human being.


End file.
